Venting (Just a Little)

I haven't posted much about the medium Little Jogger's soccer team, which, you will recall, I am coaching this year. It hasn't been real pretty. They won their first game (the one that I missed while I was in D.C.) and have lost every game since. But they don't seem too discouraged. These are seven-, eight-, and nine-year-olds, and they just want to play. Literally, one kid asked me after the game today what the score was, and when I replied "4-2", he asked "Who won?" Which is what makes today's little peeve all the worse.

One thing that these kids have problems with is goal kicks. Depending on who is kicking, they sometimes have trouble getting them out of the goal box. In the first half, my goalie really struggled, to the point where a couple of times I had someone else take the goal kick. That's OK. Generally, what the ref does is call it back if it goes really, really short, but lets them play if it goes close to the edge of the goal box.

In the second half, their goalie had similar struggles. So on one kick, my guy took to goal kick, kicked it back at their goal, hit it off the post, then followed that up and scored. I was proud of him. He kept his head, followed the shot, and got a goal. So that's when their coach complained about the ball not going out of the goal box. He bent the ref's ear, to the point that the ref asked me if it was OK to call the goal back and let them retake the goal kick. (The ref was just a fifteen year old kick with a tube of Oxy in his back pocket, or he would have known never to change a decision like that.) I said, "Sure. Let's just play soccer." So Cole lost his goal, and we eventually lost 4-2, instead of 4-3. I'm just mad that their coach made a big deal out of it, especially right then. Let my guy have his goal. These kids just want to have fun.

Anyway, I didn't make a big deal of it at the time. I'm trying to get my kids to be good sports, and I didn't think that arguing over this goal would be a good example. I just filed it away to gripe about on the Internets.